Might be a dumb question.
If someone goes through, say, a murder trial, and is found to be not guilty, what happens if he starts bragging about it and admitting he killed and got away with it?
Would double jeopardy laws prevent him from being retried? Or would the new evidence (his confession) superscede that?
Sounds like an interesting question to me… like “what would happen if OJ came clean?”
I’d like to learn the answer too.
Criminal lawyers and DA’s will have to give you a definitive answer if there is one. I’ve discovered that the ban on double jeopardy isn’t nearly as iron clad as I had always imagined. This site has double jeopardy information.
Here is an interesting quote from the site: “During the 1970s especially, the Court decided an uncommonly large number of cases raising double jeopardy claims. Instead of the clarity that often emerges from intense consideration of a particular issue, however, double jeopardy doctrine has descended into a state of ‘‘confusion,’’ with the Court acknowledging that its decisions ‘‘can hardly be characterized as models of consistency and clarity.’’ In large part, the re-evaluation of doctrine and principle has not resulted in the development of clear and consistent guidelines because of the differing emphases of the Justices upon the purposes of the clause and the consequent shifting coalition of majorities based on highly technical distinctions and individualistic fact patterns.”
It is my understanding that you CANNOT be tried again.
It’s not a dumb question. In fact, it is one that has been subject to wide debate both in the U.S. and in England.
You can take something from criminal court to civil court (pain and suffering) or to federal court (civil rights violation), etc. A nice example of this is the OJ Simpson fiasco (acquitted in criminal court and found liable in civil court). See, http://www.usatoday.com/news/index/nns226.htm
If a person confesses, he may be tried for perjury and other related charges, but there’s no clear consensus on whether he can or should be retried on charges he was formerly acquitted of. Currently, it IS against the double-jeopardy law but the topic of hot debate. See http://www.usatoday.com/news/index/nns226.htm again.
Another interesting case is Timothy McVey (the Oklahoma bomber). He was convicted and sentenced to death. His lawyers wanted to retry the case, but McVey subsequently “confessed.” Although they tried to have that confession declared inadmissible as hearsay, they lost because McVey himself published the confession (http://slate.msn.com/id/1007675/).
There’s also the case from the 60’s where a black Chicago youth was beaten half to death and then shot for whistling at a white woman in some segregated area of the South. The two killers were acquitted (by a all-white jury, of course) and then later gave interviews to major publications practically bragging about their deed and graphically stating the details. They were not re-tried for the crime.
I remember recently the government here announced it intended to remove the double jeopardy protection. I’ve yet to hear any specific details, but it does make one wonder how a second trial for the same offence could ever be fair? Unless of course no-one knew about the first…
But if they were bragging about committing the crime, would that not count as a confession? No need to prove guilt, as they’ve already admitted it.
Jxx
Remember the cops who beat up Rodney King?
Found “Not Guilty” in state court. Then the Feds came along and charged them with violating King’s civil rights. Found them guilty the next time around.
The trick seems to be to find ANOTHER crime to charge them with. Or maybe another jurisdiction.
It would seem to me that at least it would leave you defenceless in a wrongfull death suit.
In the USA, double-jeopardy protection is a constitutional issue. I don’t know the law in England, but in the ‘States the government can’t just remove double jeopardy protection for convenience’ sake.
It’s not in the Constitution to permit butt-holes to go free and brag aftwards, but to protect us from harassing prosecution. Without it, some D.A. you pissed off in high school out for revenge could try you, and try you, and try you repeatedly for anything! With double-jeopardy protection, the government has one chance to do the job right.
With all things constitutional, it’ll probably be up to the Supremem Court to interpret it some day. For example, if O.J. were to confess, he could be tried based on that, appeal it as a violation of his rights, and take it to the Supreme Court to decide if double-jeopardy applies in cases of post-acquittal confession.
On that note, I’m somewhat aware of a prosecutor “dropping a case with/without prejudice” or a judge “dismissing with/without prejudice.” One of them – without prejudice – means you can be prosecuted again. Really, it’s not “again” since you’re not really getting prosecuted the first time. “With prejudice,” then, would seem to mean that constitutional protections kick in.
In general, double jeopardy protections would prevent being tried again no matter what you said. But, as noted, there are a couple of widely known exceptions:
Acquital in a criminal matter does not protect you from a civil case. Someone has already cited the O.J. Simpson case.
As others have cited as well, sometimes the Fed will step in if a state court finds someone guilty. My contribution to this is the reference to the concept of “dual sovereigns”; i.e., if one government tries you (the state) that does not invoke double jeopardy for the other (the fed). However, in this case the Fed may not retry for the specific crimes that the state court found not guilty on (murder); it may only try for federal offenses that over which the state court does not have jurisdiction (civil rights violations in many cases, but firearms laws violations and tax violations are other examples).
So your mouth can get you in trouble, even if you are acquitted.
Note, too, that there’s a big difference between an acquittal and a guilty verdict that is later overturned. In Virginia, we just saw this distinction in the case of Paul Powell, who was convicted on capital murder charges. The state supreme court overturned his conviction, and Powell wrote a bragging letter to prosecutors. The letter contained admissions and details, and prosecutors were able to proceed with a new trial based on those admissions.
After an acquittal, a person may not be re-tried again on the same charges, even if he confesses. The question of what constitutes the “same charges” can be a tricky one – if he was acquitted of first degree murder, can he now, post-confession, be re-tried for second-degree murder? How about illegal use of a firearm inside city limits?
The Supreme Court set forth a rule called the Blockburger or same elements test. Two charges are different for the purposes of double jeopardy if each requires the proof of an element that the other did not.
I remember watching a Discovery Channel tidbit about criminal justice around 3 years ago. I can’t remember the guys name but he was from some midwest state. He was tried for murder, didn’t take the witness stand, and was acquitted. He sold his house but didn’t remove the pictures of all the women he murdered (the pictures were from after the murder). The police/justice department/DA’s/Etc are constantly charging him with other petty crimes related to the crimes that he initially committed to keep him in jail since anything else would be double jeapordy. He freely admits now that he killed the women and is completely unremorseful about it. Every time he gets out of jail he goes almost directly to another trial even though he was acquitted of the actual murders.
Does anyone out there remember his name so we can get a specific cite for it?
I asked a similar question on thse boards a while back.
The consensus seemd to be that you couldn’t be tried again exactly, but the courts could try you on other charges related to the crime, or some federal chrges. AerynSun made an interesting point that lesser charges related to the original offense may be barred as well.
You would be dead meat in a civil trial, of course.
You would certainly be immediately prosecuted for perjury in the UK.
Further than that, I am not sure, but if there was a high profile enough instance of it happening, it would probably lead to a necessary change in law to enable a second trial.
Eg: Jack the Ripper lies through his teeth, villifies his victims throughout the trial, and gets off. Next day, he sells the warts-and-all truth to the tabloids, along with video evidence of him actually doing the killings, etc etc.
Now what government or administration is going to sit back and take that?! And what public?
Oo. Having actually bothered to do some Googling I found the following:
Run a search on “double jeopardy law UK” and some very interesting articles turn up. From those I saw it’s not yet clear whether the law has yet been changed though.
I think the reason put forward for scrapping the double jeopardy law in the UK is the advance in technology , especially DNA ,where perhaps years later it can be proved that the person found not guilty had actually commited the crime with 100% proof given by the scientific evidence.
I believe that before somebody can be tried again the whole case will have to be reviewed by an independant commission or panel of judges to ensure that the suspected person is not being unduly victimised on the whim of the police or prosecution service and that there is a watertight case against him.
Dorkus, that was the Mel Ignatow case in Louisville, KY., which is my hometown. I was already practicing law in GA when the case went to trial, and had my sister (who is an attorney in Louisville) send me the Lou. newspapers so I could keep up with it (pre-internet days, dontchaknow). There was also a book written about it, I can’t recall the name.
His girlfreind testified at trial, and apparetnly the jurors found her to be totally without credibility. They acquitted Ignatow. Ernie Jasmine, the DA at the time, took a lot of heat and was widely thought to have blown the case.
Mr. Ignatow did give some sworn testimony somewhere along the line, denying that he'd killed the victim (I think he did testify at trial, but it could have been a pre-trial deposition). When he moved, he left photos of the victim's body in an air vent that he'd carpeted over. The new owners replaced the carpet, and found the photos. They showed that she's been murderd EXACTLY as the girlfriend (that the jurors didn't believe) had described.
So, the prosecutors couldn't retry him for murder. Becasue he'd given sworn testimony, however, they prosecuted him for perjury. He did wind up admitting in open court that he committed the murder, which was some small consolation for the family of the victim. The maximum penalty for perjury in KY at the time was 5 years.
Ignatow's defense attorney for the murder trial took a bit of heat as well after they discovered the photos. He maintained that at the time of the trial, he thought his client was innocent and that he had done his job.
This is probably more info than anyone wants, but obviously, I found the whole thing fascinating.This person’s name (I use the term person loosely here. . . ) is Mel Ignatow. He killed Brenda Schaefer in 1998 in Louisville, KY, but was acquitted in the trial. Later he admitted that he did it and the pictures he had taken recording the murder were found in his old house when it was being remodeled. In January 2002, he was sentenced to nine years in prison for perjury and ‘being a persistant felon’. In January of this year a judge denied bail for Ignatow while he appeals the perjury conviction.
Here’s the most recent story on him: http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/breaking_news/4874581.htm
A Google search on his name turns up plenty of sites concerning the case. It’s a truly awful set of circumstances and you can see that the prosecutors have been very frustrated by the constraints of the law in this particular case. It makes one wonder if there ought to be specific, narrow situations in which double jeopardy wouldn’t apply. That’s another can of worms though.